Amherst College - interdisciplinaryhttps://www.amherst.edu/taxonomy/term/2149
enAmherst Drives Conversation on Improvisation and Interdisciplinarity in the Liberal Artshttps://www.amherst.edu/news/archives/faculty/node/589226
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<img alt="Faculty Workshop" class="media-image" height="1626" style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="" width="3447" src="https://www.amherst.edu/system/files/media/IMG_0088.JPG&amp;__=1418061671" /> </span>
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<p style="text-align:left;"><span class="drop-cap2"><br></span><a href="https://www.amherst.edu/users/R/jrobinson/aalac-improvisation">“Improvisation, Interdisciplinarity and the Liberal Arts</a>,” a three-day faculty workshop at Amherst, brought together professors and researchers from leading liberal arts institutions across the country with the goal of building collaborative networks among faculty whose research and teaching explore the burgeoning field of improvisation studies.</p>
<p>Organized primarily by <a href="https://www.amherst.edu/people/facstaff/jrobinson">Jason Robinson</a>, assistant professor of music at Amherst, and sponsored by the <a href="http://www.aalaccollaborative.org/">Alliance to Advance Liberal Arts Colleges</a>, the workshop hosted scholars from Amherst, Barnard, Hampshire, Oberlin, Pomona, Reed, Smith, Swarthmore and Wellesley Colleges; Columbia, Denison, Furman, Harvard and Wesleyan Universities; and the University of Guelph in Ontario. The attendees’ departmental affiliations ranged from art, theater, dance and music, to biology, comparative literature, American studies and computer science.</p>
<p><!--break-->Robinson, a jazz musician who studies improvisation through scholarly research and creative practice, says the term <em>improvisation</em><em>al</em> has been historically defined and understood as meaning “ad-hoc,” “collaborative,” “unplanned” or “happening in real time,” and that “improvisation studies as a field grapples with the term having all these different references.” While recognizing that music and dance have long been leaders in theorizing improvisation, he says that now emerging in the field is “the strongly supported notion of improvisation as a fundamental state of human experience,” an idea that has paved the way for “a significant and growing body of critical studies that focus on improvisation.”</p>
<p>Robinson describes improvisation as “inherently multidisciplinary.” In his written description of the workshop, he lists multiple areas of study in which influential work on improvisation is now taking place: anthropology and sociology; architecture and urban studies; cognitive and computer science; contemplative studies; cultural studies; dance; economics; education; linguistics; literary theory; musicology, ethnomusicology and music theory; neuroscience and psychology; performance, film, gender and sexuality studies; philosophy; theology; and more.</p>
<p>George E. Lewis, the Edwin H. Case Professor of American Music at Columbia University, delivered one of the workshop’s two keynote addresses (see the videos below). In the field’s early years, “the notion of ‘improvisation studies’ seemed an oxymoron to many,” he said. “Fifteen years later, it seems that critical improvisation studies has exploded, with a surge in interdisciplinary inquiry across many musical and nominally nonmusical fields. Most broadly, the critical study of improvisation seeks to examine improvisation’s effects, interrogate its discourses, interpret narratives and histories related to it, discover the implications of those narratives and histories, and uncover its ideologies.” With Benjamin Piekut of Cornell University, Lewis is preparing to publish <em>The Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies</em>, a book that Robinson says will inform his own research and teaching.</p>
<p>In focusing on the ways in which improvisation studies, critical improvisation and theorizing improvisation are taking shape at liberal arts colleges, the workshop encouraged faculty participants to consider how improvisation engages and activates modes of critical thinking, creativity and knowledge production in a liberal arts context, and to explore ways to integrate improvisation into their classes.</p>
<p>Following the workshop, Robinson has encouraged his colleagues at Amherst to imagine ways to sustain these ideas through future creative work, scholarship and teaching endeavors.</p>
<p class="orange-heading">Watch the Keynote Addresses</p>
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<p><span class="orange-heading">Prolegomena to Critical Improvisation Studies</span><br><strong>George E. Lewis</strong>, <em>Edwin H. Case Professor of American Music</em>, Columbia University</p>
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<p><span class="orange-heading">Sound Changes: Five Takes on Improvisation, Social Justice and Interdisciplinarity</span><br><strong>Daniel Fischlin</strong>, <em>University Research Chair</em>,<br>University of Guelph</p>
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<p> </p></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-1 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/2282">improvisation</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/9672">improv</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1378">Robinson</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/8583">Jason Robinson</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/2149">interdisciplinary</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/128">music</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1358">arts</a></div></div></div><ul class="links inline"><li class="sharethis first last"><a href="/sharethis-ajax/589226" class="mm-sharethis">Share</a></li>
</ul>Mon, 08 Dec 2014 16:12:48 +0000rrogol589226 at https://www.amherst.eduhttps://www.amherst.edu/news/archives/faculty/node/589226#commentsGiving, Under the Microscopehttps://www.amherst.edu/amherst-story/magazine/issues/2011winter/collegerow/giving/node/293606
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p><span class="fine-print">Interview by Caroline J. Hanna</span></p><p><span class="drop-cap2">L</span>ast semester and in 2009, an interdisciplinary course prompted students to think critically about philanthropy. Co-taught by Rhonda Cobham-Sander, the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Black Studies and English, and Molly Mead, director of the Center for Community Engagement, <a href="/academiclife/departments/courses/1011F/KENA/KENA-24-1011F">“Giving”</a> forced participants to take a hard look at their own charitable activities, as well as those of their alma mater, and to think about what it really means to give and receive. The two instructors spoke to <i>Amherst </i>magazine about the course. <br><br><b>Q How did the course come to be?</b><br> RCS I was intrigued with the idea of how a place like Amherst supports itself. I also had been hearing from a lot of students who felt as if they had two quite separate choices: working on Wall Street or working at an NGO or nonprofit. There was an assumption that those choices were completely incompatible. I wanted to find a way to connect them, to help students think of philanthropy as important in both the for-profit and nonprofit spheres. <br><br><b>Q After studying philanthropy, do students become cynical?</b><br> RCS The course takes a critical look at the power relations connecting who’s giving and who’s receiving. Students often talk about how the class has made them rethink their goals. Seniors applying for jobs at nonprofits seem especially affected. It’s not that they abandon their dreams. Rather, they realize they have a new set of critical questions they need to ask about the goals of their chosen programs. I would say that students do not become more cynical about philanthropy, but they definitely become a lot more thoughtful.</p><p>MM Particularly when it comes to charity and giving, there are really no absolute truths about who’s good and who’s bad. A very wise educational philosopher, William Perry, believed that our final job as educators is to show our students how to make commitments in the world—commitments to sets of beliefs, to actions, to creating a life. <br><br><b>Q How else have you seen students change?</b><br> MM We had one young woman, a senior, who was raised in a Greek Orthodox household. She started thinking about applying to the Peace Corps and Teach For America, two very secular activities. But through this course she went back and decided that she wanted to do a year of service or two through an organized program of her religion. I think she began to re-own things that were important to her and her family—her value system—in a new, more sophisticated way. <br><br><b>Q Do students talk about their own experiences on the receiving end of philanthropy? </b><br> RCS Halfway through the semester in 2009, we noticed that we had fallen into the habit of speaking as if we only ever occupied the position of benefactors. We weren’t really thinking of ourselves as beneficiaries. Molly and I realized that we had given students few conceptual tools to talk about what they perceived to be differences in wealth and/or power among themselves, and as a result, students had begun to censor the issues they were willing to hold up to critical scrutiny. We ended up having a discussion one day about how in a meritocracy everyone wants to claim “humble beginnings,” but no one really wants to be described as “humble.” For the final portfolios, about a third of the students chose to include information they had never shared in class about how they were the beneficiaries of gifts. One student even put in her financial aid statement. I think that was a really important decision be­cause, even though more than half of all Amherst students receive need-based grants from Amherst, financial aid often is stigmatized as an undeserved handout—even in the minds of recipients.</p></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-1 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/82">Giving</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/94">cce</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/503">philanthropy</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1046">mead</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1223">center for community engagement</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1368">molly mead</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/2149">interdisciplinary</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4974">Rhonda Cobham-Sander</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/14788">Cobham-Sander</a></div></div></div><ul class="links inline"><li class="sharethis first last"><a href="/sharethis-ajax/293606" class="mm-sharethis">Share</a></li>
</ul>Mon, 14 Feb 2011 05:00:00 +0000kdduke293606 at https://www.amherst.eduhttps://www.amherst.edu/amherst-story/magazine/issues/2011winter/collegerow/giving/node/293606#commentsInterdisciplinary Concentrationshttps://www.amherst.edu/academiclife/departments/interdisciplinary/node/17201
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>Amherst College supports several interdisiplinary and certification programs.</p><ul><li><a href="/academiclife/interdisciplinary/teaching/">Teaching</a> </li><li><a href="/academiclife/interdisciplinary/latinamerican">Latin-American Studies</a> </li></ul></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-1 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/2149">interdisciplinary</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4725">certification</a></div></div></div>Wed, 08 Aug 2007 12:39:10 +0000jkprice17201 at https://www.amherst.edu